


To the Order of Night

by storyskein



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Future Fic, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Sleepy Cuddles, Spooning, littlespoon!Bellamy, look it's kind of mushy but i just love them so here it is, there is some talk of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6685444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyskein/pseuds/storyskein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy and Clarke hang out after a long day of preparing for Arkadia's exodus. Drinking, poker, and cuddling ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Order of Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [danikboo](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=danikboo).



Clarke looks up at the digital clock in Med Bay and the numbers _00:14_ blink at her. She puts her head in her hands and sighs, pressing her fingers into her temple. 

“Clarke, you need to go,” Jackson’s soft voice comes from behind her. “I’m closing up for the night.”

Clarke worries her lip a little. “I just have one more file to fill out…”

Jackson switches off the lamp on her desk. “No. I’m sending you to sleep. We have three more days before we leave and only twenty people left to get to. You’re fine.”

She nods and suddenly her bones are heavy as lead, her muscles absent the ability to move her body. 

“Yeah, you’re right. Tell my mom I’ll be back in the morning.”

Jackson smiles gently at her. “Yeah, no problem. But sleep in a little, okay? We all need as much rest as we can get before we leave.”

Clarke squeezes his arm on the way out, feeling profoundly grateful that Jackson lived. He was a constant presence in her childhood, from his when he apprenticed with Abby to when she apprenticed with him before…everything. 

The lights in the corridor are at brown-out. The halls are empty. They’ve only returned to Arkadia to gather supplies and form a real exit strategy—no one wants to stay in a place so haunted—but while they’re here the Med team is giving everyone a health check. That, combined with cataloging as much of their supplies as possible and making a strategy for prolonged field medicine—well. It means that Clarke’s nights are late. But she doesn’t mind. She’s working with her mom again, like she did on the Ark, and for the first time in…ever…it seems like everyone is on the same page. There’s no fighting—just determination and work.

Clarke is rounding the corner to the smaller rooms for single people when Bellamy comes in the door at the other end of the hallway. She involuntarily sucks in a little, her stomach going all butterfly-y. 

He sees her, stops, and tries for some pretense of a smile. But he can’t hold it. Pretense isn’t them; it never was. 

At least now she can go to him. They’re not together—not like that, and she shies away from it just yet. What happened between them and the City of Light was too raw and powerful for either of them to have fully processed only two weeks later, so they just try to be…friends. 

It works. 

Mostly. 

At least, she knows that they might have more time now to figure it out. 

Though, looking at him across the hallway, with blood on his face and sweat in his hair and a new tears on his already-battered guard jacket, unease skitters across her skin like dead leaves in an autumn wind. 

“Hey,” she says, voice low, as she walks towards him. 

“Hey, yourself.” He meets her halfway, and they’re conveniently in between their doors. They live catty-corner to each other, and the other Delinquents populate the hallway. 

Before she can think better of it, her hand reaches to his jacket, brushes along a streak of mud—or is that blood? She can’t tell in the dim light. He looks down at her hand, then at her. 

“What happened?”

Bellamy shoves a hand through his dark curls and sighs out. “We came upon a pack.”

“Of the Chipped?” Clarke doesn’t know why she asks; she knows. It’s just so fucking weird that it’s almost unbelievable. 

He nods, curt. “Yeah.”

Clarke exhales, sharp, and looks away from him. Some of the ALIE-chipped somehow didn’t disengage fully when they shut down the City of Light. They became feral instead, glitchy somehow. You could run across a pod, comatose, in a heap. Still alive, just barely. 

Or, if you were unlucky, you came upon a pack. They ran together, vicious and and disconnected from everything but the most basic survival instincts. 

It was a brutish legacy for ALIE to leave. The first scouting trip to run across them didn’t survive. 

“Did anyone get hurt? Should I go back to medical?”

“No, thank god. They’re loud fuckers. We heard them before we saw them. Still…” His eyes get a faraway look like they do sometimes now. “It’s just…”

“I know.” She presses her hand against his jacket, looks up at him. He’s looking down at her now, and she’s thankful that at least with her that faraway look doesn’t stay. 

Instead it becomes a bit soft. 

The moment between them lingers, because they both want something more, but they’re not ready for _that_ , and it’s really fucking hard to figure out where the good in-between is. 

And tonight with that awful shiver of anxiety, seeing him with blood on his face and knowing that he just had to kill people, even if they were the Chipped…

The thing is, Bellamy would never ask. Clarke knows this. She’s not even sure he could articulate his needs even if she asked him. But looking at him, knowing him like she does…

“Bellamy, why don’t you go shower up and come to my room and hang out.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Aren’t you tired? It’s late—”

Clarke shakes her head. “No…I’m kind of wired, actually. I filched some moonshine from the bar yesterday. Come on. Keep me company.”

Bellamy smiles, a real honest-to-god Bellamy smile, and Clarke didn’t know something could light her up so much. Well, okay, she did—and it’s always him being happy and alive and well—but she is still trying not to think about that. Too much. Except for now, of course, when she invited him back to her room for a drink. 

But Bellamy is way more smooth than she is and knows when she needs a social assist. “Okay, Griffin. I’ll see you in your room in fifteen.” He places one of his large hands over hers, still on his jacket, and presses her fingers gently. “Don’t drink all the booze before I get there.”

Clarke opens the door to her room and exhales fully when she closes it behind her. The single rooms are tiny, just a full sized bed on one side and a combo bookshelf/desk built-in separated by a narrow strip of floor. But it’s hers until they leave, and she likes it. 

Clarke’s armor jacket hangs on a hook by the window, and she has a vase of summer flowers that she picked on the sill. They might not be back for a long, but Clarke is determined to make things better. Even if it’s just some flowers in a jar.

Her muscles ache as she shucks her clothes and stretches a bit. She didn’t want to shower—one, awkward after seeing Bellamy—but two, it was just one of those nights when the cost-benefit wasn’t on the side of showering. Still…she grabbed a rag and her the canteen she kept in her room and freshened up. 

What was the line they were working with here? Hell if she knew. But she figured it was just polite if she didn’t smell like Med Bay. 

By the time Bellamy knocks she’s in a clean tanktop and some men’s boxers, rolled over twice to keep from sagging. 

“Come in,” she calls, keeping her voice soft. Bellamy opens the door and closes it quietly. 

Her eyes watch to him even as she’s reaching for the moonshine. Now that he’s clean she can see clearly the new cuts on his face, and a bruise is purpling along his throat. 

“What happened there?”

Bellamy knows what she means. “One of them jumped on me from behind.”

Clarke tamps down on the worry that rises. This is their life, and it’s not going to change for the foreseeable future. Just because whatever is between her and Bellamy right now is tender and new doesn’t change that. As much as she wishes it did. 

“Well, that deserves a shot.” She hands him a jar with two fingers of moonshine. 

Bellamy takes the jar and clinks glasses with her. “To another day.”

She shoots it back. “To another fucking day.”

They drink and play cards and gossip as the night deepens. The Ark goes silent, the only sound is the rustle of the warm spring breeze outside her window. 

It’s at that point where they both know they should go to bed, but they’re genuinely having a good time, and they're both pretty buzzed, and it’s hard to just stop when things are easy like this. 

“I can’t believe you went all in on a seven/two off suit!” Clarke whisper-shouts as she drains the last of the moonshine in her jar. 

“I can’t believe that you folded,” he smirks, pulling all of the dried apple slices forward they had used as chips. Clarke looks mournfully at him, tossing her pair of queens onto the pile of cards. Yeah, it’s a _little_ dramatic, but only a little. She had hoarded those apples for days. 

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Griffin, you are a first class pouter.”

“I don’t pout.”

“Sure you do. All the time.” He leans back in the chair, legs long and relaxed out in front of him. “But here, because you’re cute.” He divides his hoard, pushes some back towards her. “You can have half back.”

“Only half?”

“Are you kidding? If I had known you were squirreling away dried apples and moonshine I would have stolen from you sooner.”

Clarke laughs. “I accept your terms. You played a good game.”

“Of course I did. To think that _you_ thought you could win at cards playing against someone from Factory. Tsk.”

“So boastful.”

He doesn’t deny it, but the conversation between them stills, and his grin fades. It’s another one of those intersections they keep having—that all of them have—when things are light and then the undercurrent of darkness tugs at them. 

Before Clarke can say anything, though, Bellamy begins to speak. 

“Today…,” his eyes flick up to her. 

He has one arm on the desk, and she reaches out and lays her hand on top of his. She’s always surprised at how large his hand is compared to hers; how warm when hers are cool. 

Bellamy runs his thumb across her fingers.

“They’re people,” he finally says, soft. “You know?”

Clarke squeezes his hand in hers. “I know.”

He looks down, looks at their hands together, looks back up at her. “I just thought…after we brought down ALIE that the killing would…” He pauses, unsure of how to continue.

“Be less,” Clarke says finally. It’s what they all had hoped. And in a lot of ways it was, at least so far. But not for him, not yet. The Chipped had to be killed, and Bellamy had volunteered to be a part of the team that would do it. Because of course he did. “I know. Me too.”

Bellamy exhales, breath shuddering out of him.

Clarke wants to give him fake promises, she wants to say _It will be, someday, it’ll be less._ But she can’t. Because they don’t lie to each other, even if the truth fucking sucks. 

The tension of the line they’re trying to maintain thrums in her, settles between them. His eyes are unfocused, a bit punch-bleary, and gazing at their hands together. So Clarke takes a moment to just look at him. The midnight curls that frame his face, the new cuts crossed over the ridged silver scars on his face, the freckles, his broad shoulders stretching his t-shirt. 

Worry creases his brow, the weight of things weighs down his shoulders. The last thing Clarke wants is this night, this night that’s been so breezy and fun, so _good_ , to end sour. Not when it was in her power to do something about it. 

“Bellamy.” She moves her fingers in between his, squeezes. He looks up at her, not startled exactly, but pulled from his thoughts. 

He licks his lips. “I should go. It’s late.”

Clarke pushes the words out before she can think about it. “No. Don’t go.” Heat flushes from her chest the top of her forehead. “Stay.”

Bellamy, bless him, looks stricken. Like he can’t believe it. “Clarke…”

“No…I mean, not tonight. Not yet.” Her belly pulls at the thought, but _not yet_ rings in her mind. “But um. I don’t want to be alone at night anymore,” she admits, which is true. His eyes soften, and she adds, “I don’t think you do, either.”

He could deny it, but she sees that he doesn’t even want to. But he doesn’t know exactly what to say, either. 

Clarke’s tempted to talk for him, but she won’t. He needs to answer this for himself. 

“You’re right,” he says finally. His voice is ragged around the edges. “I don’t.”

“Then come to bed, Blake.” Clarke tugs his hand so that he stands.

And the look on his face—she knows that she’ll remember it for the rest of her life. His eyes are wide, dark and clear, his face a shadowy silver-blue from the moonlight filtering in through the window. The look he’s giving her makes her legs shiver, drops heat down her spine, yet causes the most intense feeling of tenderness to ache in her chest.

Bellamy slides in, wordless, then opens his arm out for her to crawl in next to him. Which she does, pulling her blankets up around them. But that’s not what she wants. Not now. 

“Roll over,” she whispers to him. 

“What?” he says. His fingers are drawing light circles on the top of her head and it feels like heaven. She’s tempted to just stay like this but…

“Roll over.”

She can practically hear him grinning above her, primed with some snarky comment, but then he just does it. 

Clarke curls around him, drops her forehead between his shoulder blades, fits her hips against his ass. She bends one arm to pillow her head and presses the other one into his stomach. 

Bellamy’s tense for a moment while she adjusts herself, fitting against him as tightly as she can, because god, he feels good. He’s muscular and warm and his t-shirt is so old it’s silky against her cheek. 

Clarke’s heart has broken a bit before thinking about Bellamy and how he grew up, how the dropship was, what happened between him and Octavia. How he’s still always ready with a supportive touch for everyone, but that it’s only between them now that there are embraces. So she gives into the feeling now, nuzzles closer and breathes him in. He smells warm and soapy and like the outdoors, and she squeezes him that much tighter. 

“Careful, Griffin, I still have to breathe.” But he sounds pleased. Bellamy pulls her arm in and locks them together, scoots his hips back into her so they’re even closer, if that’s possible.

Clarke knows, of course, that spooning Bellamy isn’t protecting him. That he still will have to go out tomorrow, walk through those gates and find what he finds. But for tonight? Tonight she can hold him, help him carry it. 

She tucks the blankets in around them and places a chaste kiss at the junction of his shoulders and neck. Bellamy makes a deep, contented sound in his chest. “Go to sleep, Clarke,” he murmurs, bringing her hand up and returning the kiss.

Clarke waits for him to fall asleep first, and he finally does. It takes awhile, though, but as he nears full sleep his body softens into hers, muscle by muscle. Finally, he’s breathing deeply, fully, and using that sound, Clarke lulls herself to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "To the Order of Night" by Balmorhea
> 
> littlespoon!Bellamy for danikboo. I also seem to have a thing for Bellamy and Clarke going to sleep, because obviously they need a nap.


End file.
